Page:Copyright Law Revision (Senate Report No. 94-473).djvu/138

 whether or not the published edition contains any new copyrightable material. Under the bill there would be no need to make a second registration for the published edition unless it contains sufficient added material to be considered a “derivative work” or “compilation” under section 103.

On the other hand, there will be a number of cases where the copyright owners, although not required to do so, would like to have registration made for his published edition, especially since he will still be obliged to deposit copies or phonorecords of it in the Copyright Office under section 407. From the point of view of the public there are advantages in allowing him to do so, since registration for the published edition will put on record the facts about the work in the form in which it is actually distributed to the public. Accordingly, section 408(c), which is intended to accomplish this result, makes an exception to the general rule against allowing more than one registration for the same work.

The various clauses of section 409, which specify the information to be included in an application for copyright registration, are intended to give the Register of Copyrights authority to elicit all of the information needed to examine the application and to make a meaningful record of registration. The list of enumerated items is not exhaustive, under the last clause of the section the application may also include “any other information regarded by the Register of Copyrights as bearing upon the preparation, or identification of the work or the existence, ownership, or duration of the copyright.”

Among the enumerated items there are several that are not now included in the Copyright Office’s application forms, but will become significant under the life-plus-50 term and other provisions of the bill. Clause (5), reflecting the increased importance of the interrelationship between registration of copyright claims and recordation of transfers of ownership, requires a statement of how a claimant who is not the author acquired ownership of the copyright. The catchall clause at the end of the section will enable the Register to obtain more specialized information, such as that bearing on whether the work contains material that is a “work of the United States Government.” In the case of works subject to the manufacturing requirement, the application must also include information about the manufacture of the copies.

The first two subsections of section 410 set forth the two basic duties of the Register of Copyrights with respect to copyright registration: (1) to register the claim and issue a certificate if he determines that “the material deposited constitutes copyrightable subject matter and that the other legal and formal requirements of this title have been met,” and (2) to refuse registration and notify the applicant if he determines that “the material deposited does not constitute copyrightable subject matter or that the claim is invalid for any other reason.”

Subsection (c) deals with the probative effect of a certificate of registration issued by the Register under subsection (a). Under its